VFA-41 HAD A GOOD RUN

Post by Black Aces System Admin » Sun Oct 15, 2017

Gentlemen it has been a fun and educational ride. I wish to thank Hedghog and Dragon for without their leadership, dedication, hard work and standards of excellence, this squadron would have perished long ago. The Black Aces have been the longest running virtual Naval squadron in Jane's F/A-18. Madrus I wish to thank you for your friendship and loyalty and guidance. I am honored to have flown with the best Naval Aviators in the sim world


As the last remaining admin for this site, and with only two members left, it has been decided that the VFA-41.net website will be taken down. All Campaigns, missions and mods will be made available on Simhq.com

The website will be archived. The VFA-41 squadron has not seen a real pilot application in over two years. This sim seems to only be supported by those who flew her when she was first introduced in 1999, and those offline guys on simhq.. Jane's F-18 can fly on Windows 10 but not without issues.

Registration for the forum has been turned off. The site will go offline 18 Oct. 2017, after that time please direct all future communications through the forums at simhq.com.



Thank you all for this opportunity, my hope is that at some point in the future we can once again call The Ball and hook #3 wires again on the virtual Seas.

Fair winds and following Seas to the Skippers and wingmen past and present of the world famous VFA-41 Black Aces.

Masheen

For anyone interested;

VFA-41 as a Jane's F/A-18 squadron was commissioned in 2006. The squadron was originally part of Carrier Air Wing 11 (CVW-11), but when CVW-11 floundered as an organization, rather than go down with the ship, The VFA-41 Black Aces detached and became a stand-alone squadron, continuously supporting and flying missions in Jane's F/A-18 for the next 12 years.

So, yeah, that's a long run for any virtual squadron.

Dozens of sim pilots earned their wings in VFA-41 over the years, with hundreds and hundreds of squadron missions flown in support of over 25 formal campaigns over North Korea, Syria, Iraq, and other hotbeds. Both Hedgehog and Dragon, long-time commanding officers and executive officer, logged some 700+ squadron sorties each before their retirements.

While the curtain may be coming down on the final act for the Black Aces, there's always hope that a suitable carrier-based sim will finally emerge as a vessel to inspire the resurrection of one of the most highly regarded squadrons in the flight sim world!

I'm sorry to see you guys decommission. I had dreams joining in my retirement years. But like you said, it was a good run, so good for everyone of you who was involved over the years.

Wizard

o7

I'm glad you were able to enjoy the game as long as you did. I don't think any of the dev team would have thought it would still be played almost 18 years after it came out. I must admit it's rather frustrating to read that people are still wanting to play it but can't because of evolving technology. That is one advantage to the consoles.

Elf

Do I remember correctly, that the source code for this was released?
I don't think we need too much to enjoy the sim again, just tackle the resolution and menu problems. (although these can be quite complex to solve, I can understand that).

To my knowledge EA never released the source code. At one point many years ago it looked like EA might let TSH use the code and I was even contacted by someone at EA to go over what were on the different project archive disks to make sure everything was there but I don't believe anything came from it. If it's out there without EA's blessing it would be risky to do anything with it and the code used very early Direct X code and other libraries which would be way out of date so even just trying to get it to compile and run could be quite a challenge. I know TSH did accomplish some impressive stuff with reverse engineering things but I forget the details. I think there's an article on this site about their work.

Elf

If needed, I can add the files not already on my resource site for a permanent location.

You could always stay on hiatus until DCS F14 and F/A18C is released.

Best of luck

Cheers

I am proud to have been an active member in VFA-41 for more than 10 years. Although I am rarely in the cockpit now, I do still enjoy an occasional flight now and then.

Just before the squadron was decommissioned, I completed a series of missions flown from the carrier in the Yellow Sea and from Kunsan and Osan air bases using a relabeled Iran map and the TSH landpal file that makes the terrain green. The effect is great.

I have written many F18 campaigns and missions and collected a lot of missions and utility files for F18, F15, USAF, Fighters Anthology, and F14 Fleet Defender.

If you are looking for a file for one of these sims, email your request directly to me. Please don’t post it. And please be specific and don’t just request “all .....files”. I’ll try to reply as soon as I can.

Good hunting

Dragon

lee61156@aol.com

Honestly that sim was way past it's prime and I lover the Hornet and CV ops.

Are you watching for the ED F18c?

I have prepurchased and am eagerly awaiting.

So was Falcon 4 and look where that is now........